#2) what about me would make him call me a femme lesbian as opposed to a butch lesbian (or something else)?

[smile-files]

i have no desired answer for this!!!!! don't feel pressured to pick an answer based on what my gender actually is :)

responses will inevitably depend on what way you've interacted with me: have you been a long-time follower of mine, or are you new? or did you find this poll by chance, and don't even follow me? are we mutuals or online friends? do you frequently engage with my chatty text posts? have you heard my voice, talking or singing? do you know what i look like and how i dress? do you know which characters i kin? etc.

like all people i'm interested in how i come off to people, so if anything this is just a way for me to get a sense of that lol :P

[motheatenscarf]

So, I recently recommended Castlevania to people based on the first 2 seasons, and having now seen the 3rd season I’m still keeping that recommendation but with some pretty strong warnings going in.

The TL;DR version is, I still recommend this series with the caveat that your mileage may vary depending on your tolerance for sexual themes and more specifically your sensitivity toward sexual assault. 

So uh, spoiler in the spoiler disclaimer, but content warning for discussion of the above themes. I apologize to mobile readers; this got long. I only feel the need to say all this because I have in the past recommended this show to people before these elements came into play in the first 2 seasons. So, I kind of owe it to those people who may have taken my recommendation to follow through now.

I’m sure it won’t come as a shock to anyone (or at least I hope it won’t) that Castlevania, the show which introduces its wandering drunk protagonist by having him overhear two inbred shit eating peasants in a bar talking about literal goat fucking, has a pretty cynical view on humanity and is a pretty hard R.

Most of that R rating and cynicism has been in regard to gore and Christianity and I’ve been extremely on board and pettily here for it. For all that it’s a gory mess with plenty of colorful language, however, it’s been extremely restrained when it comes to sexuality. 

For my ace ass, that was kind of an appeal. I’m not opposed to sexuality in my media, but people do tend to make it... egregious and often unbalanced. It often feels that any media that gets that R rating just goes “Fuck it, may as well!” regarding shoehorning its nudity and sexuality. And frankly, censorship laws in the United States are FUCKING ANTIQUATED AS ALL HELL, so a rape scene where the camera ogles the woman’s breasts as she’s assaulted? Yeah, sure, that’s an R. Consensual sex scene that shows no genitalia but the woman in clear arousal? That’s an NC-17 for you. And that’s just women; don’t get me started on queer censorship, we’d be here all day. So, given the country I live in, the fact that I like horror and fantasy, and the fact that I’m an asexual woman, you can maybe see where my stance on sexual themes in any adult oriented media is just, an exasperated sigh as I boredly sit through another rape scene.

So, our first scene in Castlevania S3 is of Alucard, having been alone for the last month now, slowly losing his mind to crippling loneliness and overwhelming guilt after having murdered his father where Trevor and Sypha took him at his word when he said he would be the lone guardian standing vigil over Dracula’s castle and the Belmont library. Turns out he was wrong about being fine, which we knew from last season as it ended with him alone in his room sobbing his heart out, but he’s already losing his grip here as he makes little puppets of Sypha and Trevor to carry conversation with. An eccentricity he fully acknowledges is insane.

Our next scene confirms through dialogue that Trevor and Sypha are now in a sexual relationship, even though they’re only ever shown cuddling up in bed talking about The Plot and various happenings a few episodes later. Nothing explicit is ever depicted between them.

Alucard, on the other hand, picks up a couple of strays who were the thralls of one of the vampires killed last season, specifically the evidently Japanese one named “Cho” and our two new characters............ I had to google their names, Sumi and Taka, are also Japanese. They ask him to train them to kill vampires to protect their clan. Alucard, clearly remembering what he said about “Think of all the things Dracula could have done if he’d put all this knowledge toward helping people instead of giving into his rage and destroying them,” decides to agree and help them. He is clearly trying to be the person his mother would have wanted. Aww. 

Except not aww, Taka and Sumi are two clearly traumatized and deeply flawed people from the masses which this series is, again, extremely cynical toward. They are unsubtley fixated on learning more and more powerful ways to kill vampires and Alucard is pretty chill about it because he can’t see through the 4th wall and hear the ominous music or the glances they exchange when he’s not looking. This is purely for the audience. They at one point have a discussion away from him where they try to psychoanalyze him and decide that his isolation is a self imposed punishment for killing Dracula and that this is as close as he can get to killing himself without actually doing it. THIS IS FOR THE AUDIENCE. Then they mentioned they should give him a reward for what he’s done for them.

What happens next is difficult to break down from their standpoint, as they’re not particularly well developed characters, not being Important Characters but just a duo from the masses which the show dismisses, but if you’ve caught a single frame of Alucard this season, is easy enough to explain from his perspective. They come to him at night when he can’t sleep, tell him he deserves a reward, and proceed to make sexual advances toward him, which he seems somewhat embarrassed and confused by at first before quickly becoming a participant in. Again, it is well established by this point that he desperately misses Trevor and Sypha, whom he was already jealous of the connection between last season, and is profoundly lonely. The sex, which he consents to, is clearly a proxy as it’s all he can get for now. The sex is also, unfortunately, initiated under false pretenses, and ends abruptly when the whole thing turns into a Christ allegory and they pin Alucard in the crucifix position after having betrayed him with a kiss (and then some) and demand he show them the secrets they’re certain he’s hiding from them. Alucard tries to reason with them, still insisting he knows they’re scared but that he’s been nothing but honest with them, but they’re too traumatized and broken to believe him, and so he kills them in self defense, all still right there on the bed where they were having sex. He then, reminiscent of Dracula from the series opening, stakes their bodies before the entrance to the castle as a warning to those who would come to harm him, telling the audience that he is Lisa’s son in many ways, but he is also Dracula’s, and is realizing with time and experience now that his father’s sentiment toward humanity may not have been so misplaced.

So you know. Lot to unpack there...

BUT THAT AIN’T IT, FOLKS!

There’s another, far less interesting (unbiased review here, folks) character named Hector. He’s a forgemaster which means he makes monsters which are loyal only to him. He’s no Isaac (whom I’d mentioned his backstory/characterization just kinda left a general bad taste in my mouth before but OH BABY, AM I CHANGING TUNE ON THAT ONE. Could write a whole review on Isaac but I’m gonna stay focused here) but he’s apparently here to stay, so fine. 

There was an evil femme fatale vampire last season who kinda bored me who tricked Hector into betraying Dracula and then took him captive when she got what she wanted out of him. She did not trick him with sex at least but was still “evil manipulative femme fatale” which... *yawn* In S3 she drags him back to her home country and then proceeds to talk to her own sort of war council on how to get him to make a monster army for them to use that won’t just kill them all.

The lesbian vampire war council are fuckin interesting and I love 2 of them. The other one is an actually evil seductress femme fatale who DOES manipulate him with sex. Yay. How original. Well at least there are finally enough interesting, compelling women in the story that this isn’t our token evil female vampire so it’s easy for me to shrug off and forgive. All you need to know about Hector is he played with dead animals as a kid, it freaked his parents out when he kept reviving dead things, he killed them, now he’s a dead critter loving sensitive weirdo who was willing to participate in a “humane cull” that would leave the human race in essentially livestock pens for vampires. 

So the entire time the red headed femme fatale is trying to get him to see that she’s not so bad, vampires can be civil, we don’t want what Dracula wanted, my sister didn’t trick you she appealed to your reason, blahblahblah, she’s calling him a “good boy” and leading him on, i fucking quote, “walkies” with a leash. There’s also a comment that she tended to an injured spider once. So,, y’know, she’s him, which means she’s best suited to manipulating him. And Hector even admits to being aware of what she’s doing and calls her out on it, but he’s trapped and doesn’t have much of a choice other than to go along with what she does and weirdly seems almost content at times. His weird naturalist... weirdness probably gives him some inferiority complex when it comes to vampires, I don’t know, his backstory and motive are not connected in the least and I’m frankly not interested enough in this character to give him much contemplation since it’s pretty clear there wasn’t much going into his creation. Anyway. Long story short, she eventually, with only technically lying to him about the purpose of a particular ring she wears, lures him into having sex with her and in the heat of passion has him swear loyalty to her before slipping a cursed ring on him which binds him exactly as he’d just sworn, essentially making him a slave. The sex, again, also stops here, but she makes some extremely unsettling comments later on about how he was surprisingly good at sex and she might “train him.” Which.... where to begin other than yikes, and why, and, where in the hell was a guy who played with dead animals supposed to learn to eat a bitch out like that anyway??

This is where we also, tying the themes together, learn that one of the allies Trevor and Sypha have been teaming up with was a child killer the whole time. They only learn this after he dies helping them fight the evil that had come to his town (and after the most iconic line of the season; “What the fuck is toilet paper?”) which they accomplish, but not before failing to save anyone in the village, which was consumed in an evil ritual. They’re alone again, with a distraught Sypha realizing what Trevor had tried to forget by getting caught up in her optimism, that, say it with me now;

So there is your mostly unbiased spoilery context for the scenes in question. You can make up your own mind from there if that’s something you can handle, I’m gonna go on to add a few of my own thoughts which do not represent how I believe anyone else should interpret the show, this is purely my own train of thought here.

Sex consented to under false pretenses is still rape. I don’t know that I would personally classify these as “rape scenes,” but that’s just me. The reaction of the characters afterward makes me think Hector’s comes closer than Alucard’s, but the fact that both have appropriate reactions to being sexually betrayed makes me think that’s mostly what people are talking about when they say either one was raped. Hector later falls to his knees in a panic and hopelessness as he realizes “You made me a slave, my life is over,” and Alucard just lays there on the floor where he murdered his father as he weeps silently in contemplation of his own despair. That’s... some heavy shit, and I can, again, easily see where someone with a history of abuse or assault can be completely traumatized all over again watching this. As for the leeriness/attempting to be titilating/making rape “sexy” that a lot of adult fantasy/horror does... eh? I’m asexual, none of it’s sexy to me, and I was paying attention to the visual and audio cues the entire time that were making the audience aware with their ominous music, flashing between sex and battles against evil, and watching the instigators (Taka and Sumi, and Lenore the femme fatale vampire) as the camera focused on their scheming faces. The camera in Alucard’s scene especially just seemed to want to show us how sad and lonely he is, but that was pretty well established by that point and I know a sex scene devolving into a murder scene is jarring for people.

The themes of the season were manipulation, trust, and betrayal. Hector’s story reaches a pivotal turning point the moment the ring is slipped on him. Could it have been implemented differently than through the femme fatale seduction route? Absolutely, the show hadn’t really adopted sexual themes until this season and probably could have done so without it. She’d already lied to Hector an said that the rings were symbols she and her sisters wore to unite them, she could have been lying and welcomed him to join them and gotten him to swear loyalty to them in a ceremony after spending more time getting him to trust her. It was dumb and unnecessary and probably added in there just so maybe Alucard wasn’t the sole bearer of such an experience, or maybe because they shifted his plotline to fit in with the established themes, or maybe they could only sneak a bisexual threesome past the censors if they threw in more straight sex. What can I say? The cynicism of this show is relatable.

Alucard’s was less “Yikes” for me because he was never in a position where he didn’t have emotional or physical power over Taka and Sumi, he was a mentor to them who made no sexual advances whatsoever and seemed to only want to participate in their advances because it temporarily made him feel loved and worthy only to have the rug pulled out from under him and remind him that much more painfully of how alone he is, and how right his father may have been, and how wrong he was for killing him. Could this have been done without a sex scene? Yep, it always can. I know what the writers were trying to convey and I personally don’t have an issue with it and see its effectiveness, but I fully acknowledge another hour of spitballing in the writer’s room would have avoided that. I don’t necessarily think it’s a good or bad thing that they included this, it just... is, for me. I personally think if they’re going to confirm the sexual relationship between Trevor and Sypha, though, and then show us that Alucard is clearly missing them, there’s kinda one natural conclusion to make on how Alucard’s relationship with these two was going to go. I actually think it should have been better established and more time should have been spent on his relationship with them and depicted it as romantic/sexual from an earlier stage rather than just seemingly coming out of nowhere to people who hadn’t realized, “Oh, they’re his proxies,” earlier. I personally found it more tragic than traumatizing, but I don’t have a history of sexual abuse, so that is my own biased interpretation. If someone has that experience, I would not blame them in the least for finding this unpalatable.

Other arguments I’ve seen are, why is the only bi character shown to go through this kind of trauma? I mean, Alucard is our only confirmed bi character left for now, but Isaac is heavily implied to be queer, and again. Cynical universe. And he isn’t the only character period to go through it. They’re not singling him out because he’s bi, he’s just going through a character arc and is bi. I acknowledge again it could have been handled better but I don’t necessarily think this is biphobia so much as it is... unfortunate tone deafness. Tokenism is the problem, not Alucard’s bisexuality, so here’s hoping that we get another bi or queer character soon because as of right now, it’s just rife with unfortunate implications. I had this exact issue with Isaac’s backstory/characterization last season as our lone man of color with a major role and they immediately fixed his arc this season along with introducing several new characters of color and it was honestly the highlight of the season, so... the writers have proven to me that they can learn from their mistakes and spin my suspicion into HYPE, so I’m willing to give them through season 4 to see what they do with it.

I have also seen the argument for, why are the only Japanese characters tricky and sexually manipulative? Well, because they’re human and the show is extremely cynical in its depiction of humanity, we’ve just mostly seen that with white Europeans so far. As I mentioned before, tokenism is the problem. Is it annoying to see a sexually manipulative femme fatale vampire? Yes. Can I live with it and shrug it off a helluva lot easier when we get butch warrior vampire and tactical genius vampire talking back and forth about how they plan to conquer and drink an entire nation while espousing their affection for one another? Also yes!  While we do finally get a lot more characters of color this season who are fleshed out and beautifully complex and sympathetic, I think Taka and Sumi could have been better explored, since their mistrust of Alucard makes sense but their decision to have sex with him in order to get his guard down is... really not apparent other than through speculation with 0 textual evidence to support it. I don’t think they’re sexually manipulative because they’re Japanese, I think they’re sexually manipulative because the plot calls for it and they happen to be the only Asian characters we have for now and the writers made another pretty tone deaf decision. Behind the scenes, I do wonder if they were chosen from specifically Cho’s court just so the animators had an excuse to draw her some more/get that Japanese audience invested. Orientalism is a helluva thing here in the west though, and the sexualization of east Asians is especially fucked up and I’m not gonna say this did not have catastrophically tone deaf implications. I hope we get more Asian characters with a nuanced depiction, and even though they are the only Asian characters, they are not the only sexual abusers and they are far from the only sympathetically broken but dangerous characters we see.  

This is also, I’m fairly certain, a dual-studio production, and I do know Castlevania is a Japanese video game series based on European vampire stories, and in the endless love letter between Japanese and American media, some things gets botched in the exchange. That doesn’t excuse it, and that doesn’t mean it isn’t harmful, but I also don’t think it means “Cancelvania.” But I’m Mexican-American, and Not Asian-American, or more specifically Japanese-American, so, this is purely my perspective. 

I won’t defend the choices, I certainly won’t argue with people who draw a line in the sand and say “This is unacceptable, I won’t watch this,” that’s a valid perspective to have. To me, the writers through Isaac have proven they know when and how to correct course when they need to, so I’m cautiously optimistic that this was all build up for a dynamite season 4 if/when we get it. The show is cynical, I’m cynical, but I can recognize careful writing when I see it, and to me the highlights of this unrepentantly stupid fucking show that I kinda love are gonna be worth sticking through the stuff that makes me wrinkle my nose with concern because I want to see where it goes. A time may come when that stops being the case, but for me it hasn’t reached that point yet. I completely understand if it has for anyone else though.